{"id":3726,"date":"2023-01-08T04:59:36","date_gmt":"2023-01-08T10:59:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=3726"},"modified":"2023-03-21T01:43:25","modified_gmt":"2023-03-21T06:43:25","slug":"more-families-facing-price-shocks-for-lifes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=3726","title":{"rendered":"More families facing price shocks for lifesaving children’s medications<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

For years, Meghan Neri paid $30 apiece for packages of epinephrine auto-injectors for her two adolescent children with food allergies. The price for four packs of the lifesaving medication was a manageable $120 a year.
\nSo Neri, 42, of Scituate, Massachusetts, was shocked when, in 2019, her family pharmacist said that each auto-injector pack would cost $600.
\nHer out-of-pocket cost for the year had skyrocketed to $2,400.
\nThe price of the\u00a0epinephrine shots\u2002themselves had not risen. The problem was the Neris had switched to a new, high-deductible health insurance plan to save money. Monthly payments are lower with high-deductible programs, but families must pay thousands of dollars each year before many costs \u2014 often including epi auto-injectors \u2014 are covered.
\nLike the Neris, many families are caught off guard by the jump in price. Some are forced to ration the auto-injectors or go without them.
\nThe Neri family of Scituate, Massachusetts.Courtesy Neri family
\n\u201cMany families have opted not to pick up their EpiPens because they can\u2019t afford it,\u201d said Dr. Purvi Parikh, an allergist and immunologist at NYU Langone Health in New York City. \u201cThey\u2019re taking the chance that, God forbid, a bad outcome will occur.\u201d
\nParikh said families have had to shoulder more and more financial responsibilities over the past decade, particularly as high-deductible insurance plans have become more common.
\nThe 2010 Affordable Care Act expanded\u00a0access to health insurance, so companies were faced with covering more people than ever before. To compensate, insurers \u201cnot only raised how much it costs to be covered, but they\u2019ve pushed more of that out onto the patient in the form of high-deductible plans,\u201d Parikh said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been seeing this every single year for at least the last seven to 10 years.\u201d
\nAn\u00a0analysis by KFF, also known as the Kaiser Family Foundation, found that in 2009, 17% of workers were enrolled in a health plan with an annual deductible of at least $1,000. By 2021, it was 50%.
\n\u201cThe average deductible in employer-based health insurance now is over $1,700 per person,\u201d said Larry Levitt, executive vice president of KFF.
\nWith some family plans, deductibles can soar well over $3,000.
\n\u201cWhat it means is that even when you\u2019re insured, you may not actually be protected from potentially catastrophic health care costs,\u201d Levitt said.
\nPrescriptions that previously cost no more than $30 or so \u2014 a basic copay \u2014 are now full price, which can soar into hundreds of dollars.
\nSome medications, such as drugs to control high blood pressure, are covered even before the deductible is met. But the epinephrine auto-injectors \u2014 which deliver a shot of epinephrine and are the only emergency medicine available for life-threatening allergic reactions \u2014 usually are not.
\nFew prescription drugs or devices symbolize out-of-control health care costs more than EpiPen.<\/p>\n

Nbcnews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For years, Meghan Neri paid $30 apiece for packages of epinephrine auto-injectors for her two adolescent children with food allergies. The price for four packs of the lifesaving medication was a manageable $120 a year. So Neri, 42, of Scituate, Massachusetts, was shocked when, in 2019, her family pharmacist said that each auto-injector pack would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":3140,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2893,1464,1649,3985,3986,3983,1587,3984,1586,1704],"class_list":["post-3726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-american-economy","tag-auto","tag-children","tag-evaluating-the-care-act","tag-kff","tag-life-saving-drugs","tag-neri","tag-pharmacists","tag-price","tag-prices"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3726"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8158,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3726\/revisions\/8158"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}